1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solid-state imager apparatus having an imager in which a plurality of pixel cells are arranged in a matrix form, and a driving method therefor, and further, to a camera using the solid-state imager apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
First, a technique relating to a first aspect of the present invention will be described. Conventionally, various techniques with respect to a shift register which can be made to scan in predetermined units from an arbitrary position, and a solid-state imager apparatus using the shift register are disclosed. For example, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 9-163245, as a solid-state imager apparatus capable of realizing interlace scanning, there is disclosed a solid-state imager apparatus having a shift register configured such that a plurality of unit stages respectively having a plurality of shift register units are connected in series. Moreover, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 6-350933, as a shift register which can start to scan from an arbitrary position, there is disclosed a shift register in which storage units for storing outputs of the shift register units are provided to the shift register units which are unit stages.
Next, a technique relating to a second aspect of the present invention will be described. Conventionally, in the field of electronic camera or the like, from the standpoints of high-speed reading and low electric power consumption, only the pixels which are necessary and sufficient at the time of displaying an image before image being picked-up have been read out. As this type of technique, for example, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2000-004406, there is disclosed a technique relating to an electronic camera with the feature that row groups or column groups among a plurality of photoelectric conversion pixels arranged in a matrix form are selected by a scanning circuit, and due to a desired row or column being arbitrarily selected from among the selected row groups or column groups by a selection circuit, only the pixels of the desired row or column are precisely interlaced and read.
Next, a technique relating to a third aspect of the present invention will be described. Generally, a solid-state imager apparatus has a pixel portion in which a plurality of pixel cells respectively having a function of converting an incident light into an electrical signal are arranged in a matrix form. A configuration using a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) and a configuration using a MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) are mainly used. The MOS type solid-state imager apparatus is suitable for realizing a small-sized image sensor because it is easy to load various circuits on a same chip. For example, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2002-354343 or No. 2003-46864, there is disclosed one example of a conventional MOS type image sensor.